Wiggins

While many bemoan the lack of big breakout acts, Cleveland's always had a lively local music scene, filled with creative and technically proficient bands and musicians. So much talent created an opportunity and a need: Musicians need support resources and provide a market for them. That's how Tri-C's Recording Arts and Technology (RAT) program was born.

Started in 2001, RAT trains its students in music recording, live sound and audio for video in a four-semester program plus a semester of field experience, leading to an associate's degree. It also offers courses in non-technical areas of the music business, giving students hands-on experience through the pair of music television shows it produces and the record label it runs.

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Dixon

"Our mission is to train entry-level people into the audio industry, music and sound," says program director Tommy Wiggins, who is a musician himself. "No other institutions around were addressing this on a train-people-for-work type of level, and we felt Tri-C could."

Before moving to Cleveland in 1995, Wiggins had started a similar program in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area. Tri-C president Dr. Jerry Sue Thornton had heard about what Wiggins had done and thought that such a program would be well-suited to Tri-C, with its mission to train people for jobs in the market.

"Before 2001, I was hired by the college to do feasibility and need studies, to develop an industry advisory board and to really see what the potential was," Wiggins says. "All the indicators said that there was a need for education, that there's a lot of music going on but no one was training people, training the bands how to record themselves, and live sound companies were always crying for help and still are. We wanted to start off small and get grounded in the community and see where it was going to go."

He points out that although many of his generation learned the ropes by interning in a recording studio, that's just not possible anymore.

"In the old days, back before there were schools, the only place you could learn would be an apprenticeship at a studio. Now those large studios are gone; those that aren't don't have training programs because they can't afford it. The expectations when you're coming into a job are a lot more in terms of techno savvy an entry-level person would have. We teach a system of learning that is sequential and efficient. It's the only way nowadays with technology that's exploding so rapidly to be able to learn and to make sense of all the technology that's available to create audio."

Established at Tri-C's Metro campus in order to take advantage of its television production facilities and the proximity to its jazz studies program and JazzFest, RAT started small, with 24 full-time students and 24 part-time students.

"I knew if we were at the Metro campus then that would be a central place for everybody to come," says Wiggins.

The program has grown to about 150-200 students a semester, four full-time and a dozen part-time faculty members, and 25 course offerings. And it's got further expansion plans on the drawing board. Wiggins says they'd like to see it double in size and provide more flexible scheduling to allow more weekend and evening students into the full-time track. He'd like to see the non-technical music business program become a certificate program, maybe even a degree program down the road. A digital audio for film program is in the works. And Wiggins is looking forward to the increased resources the program will have available when it moves into the new 75,000-square-foot building to be called the Center for Creativity and the Arts, which it will share with the Rock Hall library and archives, set to open sometime in 2009.

"The college envisions it as giant creative think tank," he says. "Our students will be rubbing shoulders with music students every day and video students every day, doing projects. We'll be expanding with multiple larger studios, multiple smaller individual studios. We're going to share a 3,000-foot sound stage/shooting studio with the film program."

With all these offerings, the program is looking at doing outreach and making the community more aware of what it's offering. This year, it assumed sponsorship of the annual High School Rock Off. It takes mobile recording gear to high schools and works with students to produce an original CD. And it's got the television shows, Crooked River Groove and Words and Music. It's already presented 120 local, original acts over 240 shows.

"As the program was getting started we reached out to the community right away," says Wiggins. "Bob Bryan is the guy who heads television production; he is the one who when I pitched the idea of the shows to feature on television local and area bands, he jumped on that. That was really the jumpstart into the community we needed."

This weekend the students from the program are presenting a live music event at the Metro Campus Main Stage Theater to promote the RAT program, raise money and celebrate the release of the 15th CD on RAT's Crooked River Groove record label, a compilation titled Live From Cleveland, The Crooked River Groove/WiFi Café Sampler, Volume One. The event's patterned on the Words and Music TV show. It'll feature Wiggins, Carlos Jones (the first artist ever taped for the shows), producer/musician Don Dixon and guitarist/singer/songwriter Doug Gillard who's performed with Guided by Voices, Gem and Cobra Verde.

"We're calling it Words and Music and it's all about the songs," says Wiggins. "Tri-C has a program called The Song Is You [multi-media concerts devoted to the Great American Songbook] and I said, let's do a takeoff on that. So I said who are some of the people who write songs I most respect and I put them together in an evening of songwriting."

Wiggins hopes that not only will the RAT program provide the needed technical support to the local music scene but also serve to salt the scene itself.

"What I was able to do in Minneapolis before I came here was to develop what I call a recording culture. Everyone in town knows what RAT is. Our students are all over the place. We have a good, strong reputation. You do that for about 10 years and you start developing a whole culture of recording. That was the whole selling point of the program in the first place and it's bearing fruit. Long after Wiggins sails into the sunset there's going to be a Recording Arts and Technology program."

Words and Music with Don Dixon, Doug Gillard, Carlos Jones, Tommy Wiggins: 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 2, Tri-C Metro Campus Mainstage Theater, 2900 Community College Dr. , 216.987.3277. Tickets: $10.